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In this op-ed, writer Chiara Giovanni explores the reaction to Taylor Swift and Matty Healy's relationship and what it says about the way we engage in political criticism of celebrities.
When Taylor Swift embarked upon her long-awaited Eras Tour in March 2023, it seemed like she could do no wrong. Her 10th studio album, Midnights (2022), had broken seemingly every record in existence; fans eagerly awaited the announcement of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the latest in the string of re-recordings of the pop icon’s back catalog; Swift seemed happily committed to longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Swifties, as the superstar’s fans are known, breathed a collective sigh of relief that the drama of 2016, which saw Swift publicly “canceled,” was firmly in the past.
But two months and a high-profile breakup later, we Swifties would be forgiven for feeling like the past seven years never happened. Swift’s tour of the U.S., wildly successful by any metric, has shared the spotlight with a steady stream of headline-grabbing drama, including social media unfollowings, pap walks, revealing new music, and, above all, a highly controversial new relationship. Swift’s budding romance with British musician Matty Healy, who was recently described by Jia Tolentino as “something of a test case for the digital panopticon and its reaction cycle,” has been dogged not only by rumors of Swift’s infidelity, but by Healy’s own attention-grabbing antics.
The 1975 frontman’s history of provocative behavior, from co-signing, laughing along to, and later apologizing for racist comments about rapper Ice Spice, to joking about watching torture porn involving Black women, has sparked a fierce backlash among both ardent and casual Swifties. The furor has only continued to escalate with Swift’s conveniently-timed release of a remix featuring Ice Spice (whose music video seems to obliquely hint at a collaboration with Healy himself) and the rapper’s surprise appearance onstage with Swift in New Jersey this past weekend, all of which has been critiqued as a blatant attempt at damage control for the controversy.
Healy himself admits to having deliberately baited people, and the motions of the outrage cycle are, consequently, fairly predictable: receipts documenting Healy’s behavior and critiques of Swift’s “white feminism” have spread across social media platforms, impassioned fans have launched a campaign to convince their idol to “engage in genuine self-reflection,” and even group chats I’m tangentially in are filled with disappointed disavowals, Onion headlines, and barf emojis.
It makes sense: Swift is looked up to by idealistic young women everywhere, many of whom are heartbroken that she would choose to associate with someone accused of racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia. But this particular outrage cycle misses a few things.
First, Swifties claim their protests are not against Swift’s dating choices per se, but against who has the privilege of associating with the mighty Taylor Swift brand. Yet the resulting impression is nonetheless that disillusioned Swifties simply don’t like their idol’s new boyfriend and are therefore appropriating the language of social justice (e.g., encouraging Swift to commit to “dismantling systems of oppression”) in an attempt to change her mind. But Healy is not a public servant; the status of Swift’s boyfriend is not a public good to be revoked nor a job from which someone can be justly fired for their sheer unpopularity. Conflating the two reveals the extent to which fans view Swift as a public commodity whose intimate choices ought to be subject to collective vetting. What’s more, though well-intentioned, the positioning of one woman’s romantic life as a broad political issue only serves to harm the credibility of progressive causes with a clearly defined political goal.
Second, why is this the moment that supposedly reveals Taylor Swift to be a craven white millionaire uninterested in aligning her life choices with her political ideals? After all, Swift’s history of decidedly anti-progressive actions has been well documented by now. We might look at her heavy reliance on the “Number 13” private jet, which, though it may be loaned out on occasion, still lands her within the tiny group of people who collectively cause over 50% of the global aviation emissions that pose a serious threat to the environment.
Alternatively, we might consider her team’s merchandising strategies that can appear to exploit devoted fans. Last fall, Swifties were encouraged to purchase four (yes, four) copies of the Midnights LP in different colors (retailing at $29.99 each), along with a $49 set of shelves and brass clock centerpiece, in order to create a clock face, which many did in hopes of receiving a “boost” when it came to snagging tour tickets. As recently as last week, Swift played on fans’ desires to access her entire catalog by releasing two more editions of the album, each of which featured a different, highly sought-after track, and one of which was only available to purchase for 24 hours. (Baffled fans consoled themselves by drawing up comparison charts for all the different versions of Midnights.) Beyond the music itself, recent reports find disappointed concertgoers standing in line for hours only for their $65 Eras Tour sweatshirts to fade after just one wash. Given Swift’s estimated net worth of over half a billion dollars, and reports that she stands to make another half a billion dollars in ticket sales this year, the superstar is on track to become a billionaire very soon: she hardly needs to engage in such aggressive sales tactics.
None of this is even to mention Swift’s noticeable silence on the political climate in many of the states in which she has performed this spring. Florida, Tennessee, and Texas have passed or will pass a host of bills targeting LGBTQ+ and reproductive freedoms this year. This comes in stark contrast to Swift’s Trump-era insistence on using her platform to advocate for queer and feminist rights and her deployment of Pride aesthetics in her video for the social justice anthem “You Need to Calm Down,” all of which followed the widespread critique she faced for her studied neutrality during the 2016 election. Despite her ongoing commitment to donating to local organizations at every stop of her Eras Tour, she has issued no comment on the issues purportedly closest to her heart.
In short, Swift’s fans have had ample reason to doubt the sincerity of her progressive stance over the years, meaning that nothing about the Healy (and now Ice Spice) drama ought to come as a surprise. Yet the scale of this controversy far outstrips that surrounding Swift’s carbon emissions record, though the latter’s negative impact on the world around us is far easier to quantify. Why is being seen in public with Matty Healy, of all things, the line in the sand that prompts my friends’ outrage and sparks a call for boycotts?
Swifties’ newfound shock at their idol’s choices, along with the resulting shift in public discourse from adulatory to condemnatory, reveals hypocrisies in our critiques of Swift. Our refusal to take seriously these indicators of her political values — until her dating life comes into play — betrays the gendered nature of the response to her celebrity, even 15 years into her career. Her fans’ palpable shock and disgust, with some deciding to step away from her work for the first time, demonstrates the lack of seriousness with which Swift’s prior actions have been treated. All this suggests that, because Swift is a woman whose career has long been viewed through the lens of her romantic life, from listeners attempting to link her songs to specific lovers to Swifties mourning the end of the “Joe Alwyn era,” fans and critics alike continue to brush off her actions that take place outside of a romantic context, even when they clearly signal her political priorities. The nature of the current backlash, though well-intentioned, still implies that the most important litmus test for a powerful woman’s politics is her choice of lover.
“Parasocial” is a word frequently bandied about in debates over Taylor Swift, as it refers to her listeners’s sense that they intimately know her as a result of engaging with her music. This leads to fans feeling personally hurt by Swift’s life choices, including her decision to publicly associate with a controversial figure. Yet Swift has made clear her distaste for the critiques leveled against her, expressing her unwillingness to be held up as a role model in multiple songs on Midnights. In particular, the narrator of “Dear Reader” implores listeners to “find another guiding light” instead of looking up to her.
Swift is not a social justice activist nor a political representative, and none of her recent behavior predating this relationship suggests even a remote interest in changing this. Though discussion of celebrities’ lives often yields insight about our cultural zeitgeist, framing Swift’s romantic life as a matter of political right and wrong suggests that this particular woman somehow owes us uncontroversial dating choices as a result of her immense fame. Everything we need to know about Taylor Swift’s politics has long been visible: only taking it seriously when it involves a man leaves the resulting critique hollow and contradictory. Are fans really championing social justice when we call for a public disavowal of Matty Healy, or are we just disillusioned in our musical big sister?
As the controversy cycle rumbles on, Swift continues to play her signature chess moves — releasing emotive new music to win back her fans’ sympathies, shaping her public narrative through carefully crafted Instagram posts — while Healy demonstrates his characteristic suspicion of online outrage, suggesting the current firestorm is merely an opportunity for commentators to signal their own superior politics.
We see some Swifties ready to pick up the gauntlet they had previously laid down, while others continue to be disappointed in their idol. Whether or not this firestorm abates any time soon, we would do well to remember that, ultimately, little about it is particularly out of character for Swift. The superstar’s unwavering commitment to her own success above any other ideal reminds us that looking to celebrities’ dating lives as moral benchmarks for our society will only ever be a fruitless endeavor. Disillusioned Swifties may find that this moment leads them to reexamine Swift’s other anti-progressive behavior in this light, which may well serve as the foundation for political action against climate destruction and anti-trans legislation. No matter how this plays out, one thing is clear. Just as this has by no means been the first instance where Swift’s fans have questioned how to reconcile their love for her with their politics, this will certainly not be the last.
